Canter Bridge

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Though I have owned this two-disc triology for many years, I must confess to embarking on the project of listening through and reviewing it with some reluctance. (The album is called a ‘trilogy’ because it republishes three previously released albums.) It’s not that I have any issues with Michael Card’s intentions or modus operandi. On the contrary, I’ve known and appreciated his music for ages.

It’s just that there’s a lot of music here and Card’s earnest but otherwise undistinguished tenor, largely unaccompanied by other voices, had me all set me up for a marathon experience. The kind where you’re happy when it’s over and you ramble on about the ‘great experience’ after you’ve forgotten the pain.

But The Life deserves more than that. It’s a herculean effort to tell the Jesus story with due attention to how the gospels and the apostle Paul interpret it, including its precursors in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. As the labors of an evangelist, even a pastor, Card’s work deserves our admiration.

As a musical achievement, it flies at a lower plane. But not very low.

A lot of acoustic guitar and solo voice spin out songs like the ones that the Jesus people sang in the 70s before others of us joined in at church youth groups and adolescent summer camps. Through it all, Card’s emphasis fall upon the humanity, even the personality, of ‘the Nazarene’, as the second track on the second cd is titled:

For the fact of his humanity
Was there for all to see
For he was unlike any other man
And yet so much like me

What one must take for Card’s own discovery of the Nazarene still shines through the processed product that is performed and recorded music. The same can be said on literary grounds of the New Testament materials.

If Card’s precedents go back that far, he also sings in the tradition of the medieval Passion Plays, an art form that has been fairly singled out for its anti-Semitic spin on Jesus’ murder. There is no hint of such malice in Card’s work, but one can imagine a 14th-century audience nodding along with the occasional smile of recognition as Card lingers over some detail of Jesus’ life, death, or resurrection.

In the end, it is an endearing and uplifting project, like going to a Christmas Eve service and remembering what’s important. I think I’ll listen to it once a year.